I simply can't function when I'm trying to keep track of everything and I just fall apart and I'm sick of people telling me that it's so simple and easy. It's multitasking to the utmost extreme for me and I can barely pay attention to raid mechanics when I have all this stupid shit to track.

I feel you OP. It is a lot to keep track of. I'm in the process of building an optimal UI to account for all of this. One thing that has helped out quite a bit is just putting Icy Veins, Mirror Image, and Alter Time into one macro. So now you're basically cutting the spec down to keeping Frozen Orb and Frost Bomb (or w/e bomb you have) up while casting FoF / BF procs as they come.

Invocation was too much of a hassle for me as well. Rune of Power seems pretty easy to manage but I'm going to switch over to Incanter's Ward today after maintenance and give it a go. I like the passive 6% and mana regen, and the shield will hopefully come in handy during fights with lots of group/raid damage.

I feel you OP. It is a lot to keep track of. I'm in the process of building an optimal UI to account for all of this. One thing that has helped out quite a bit is just putting Icy Veins, Mirror Image, and Alter Time into one macro. So now you're basically cutting the spec down to keeping Frozen Orb and Frost Bomb (or w/e bomb you have) up while casting FoF / BF procs as they come.

Invocation was too much of a hassle for me as well. Rune of Power seems pretty easy to manage but I'm going to switch over to Incanter's Ward today after maintenance and give it a go. I like the passive 6% and mana regen, and the shield will hopefully come in handy during fights with lots of group/raid damage.

Blizzard default UI tracks these all pretty well, and you are going to get much more out of Alter time if you use it with 2 FoF and BF procs.

There is a lot to keep track of. If your visual cues are spread all over your screen, it's difficult to keep on top of them.

Various addons exist to rectify this, as many of the above posts have indicated. I use bartender. I create a new bar on which I place all cooldowns I need to watch (make a macro for pet freeze so you can move it). Then I scale the bar up, so the buttons are much larger than normal. And then here's the really key point: I put the bar just below my character's position on the screen. Why? Because that's where your eyes ordinarily rest. You want *one central location* on your screen that gives you all the information you need. In order to track invocation, I use power auras with a timer. In particular, I set power auras up to play an annoying, unmistakable sound when invocation expires--just in case I'm distracted when it ends. Finally, I use IceHud to display enemy debuffs next to my "information zone", and make it only display *my* debuffs--good for tracking bombs.

To get extra fancy, you can also set up power auras to display the presence/duration of trinket effects in your information zone. That way you'll never accidentally drop procs by using alter time incorrectly.

There's also a good reason for putting all this stuff below your character. The other thing you generally watch during raid is your feet to make sure you're not standing in anything. Putting everything there makes multitasking 100000 times easier. Also, since you've already moved all the important stuff to one location, all the non-cooldown stuff (like frostbolt) can be put on a bar and made much smaller, giving your UI a REALLY clean and aesthetically pleasing look.

I can't stress how important doing this is. It takes a few hours of your time to set up, but you'll be amazed how you went so long without it.

Blizzard default UI tracks these all pretty well, and you are going to get much more out of Alter time if you use it with 2 FoF and BF procs.

Blizz UI tracks FoF and BF sure. I'm trying to make a better way to watch Freeze, Frozen Orb, Frost Bomb, my IV/MI/AT macro, Invocation/RoP/IW, and Time Warp in addition to the BoF and BF procs. And of course use Alter Time with x2 FoF and BF procs up, that's the whole idea of Alter Time.

i could understand your point of view on this if you'd told me you would play without addons...

i use powerauras for everything. i see a timer and hear a little sonar sound when evocation buff is down.
i see a big blue exclamation mark right next to my character when frost bomb is off cooldown (btw why is it fluctuating??).
i use coolline to keep track of cooldowns.
frostbolt (3) is applied all the time anyways...
the only thing that may be a little complicated in the beginning is proc management while alter time is active...just go see a dummy sometime and you will see what works best.

i personally always found fire to be more complex than frost, as you have to keep track of your pyro dot, have to get good pyro chains going with alter time and cooldowns, need good reactions...
there are losts of people who may disagree with this, but in most cases these are the guys who play fire in the most simplified way you could ever imagine, and therefore perform correspondingly.

i could understand your point of view on this if you'd told me you would play without addons...

i use powerauras for everything. i see a timer and hear a little sonar sound when evocation buff is down.
i see a big blue exclamation mark right next to my character when frost bomb is off cooldown (btw why is it fluctuating??).
i use coolline to keep track of cooldowns.
frostbolt (3) is applied all the time anyways...
the only thing that may be a little complicated in the beginning is proc management while alter time is active...just go see a dummy sometime and you will see what works best.

i personally always found fire to be more complex than frost, as you have to keep track of your pyro dot, have to get good pyro chains going with alter time and cooldowns, need good reactions...
there are losts of people who may disagree with this, but in most cases these are the guys who play fire in the most simplified way you could ever imagine, and therefore perform correspondingly.

i could understand your point of view on this if you'd told me you would play without addons...

i use powerauras for everything. i see a timer and hear a little sonar sound when evocation buff is down.
i see a big blue exclamation mark right next to my character when frost bomb is off cooldown (btw why is it fluctuating??).
i use coolline to keep track of cooldowns.
frostbolt (3) is applied all the time anyways...
the only thing that may be a little complicated in the beginning is proc management while alter time is active...just go see a dummy sometime and you will see what works best.

i personally always found fire to be more complex than frost, as you have to keep track of your pyro dot, have to get good pyro chains going with alter time and cooldowns, need good reactions...
there are losts of people who may disagree with this, but in most cases these are the guys who play fire in the most simplified way you could ever imagine, and therefore perform correspondingly.

I'm not arguing with you. I've never played Fire or Arcane. This expansion I'm trying something new in playing caster dps and I just like Frost a lot. However, I've seen videos of Logoz from Blood Legion playing Fire and constantly destroying meters with ease. Watching him play seems like he spams Fireball 90% of the time and just hits his procs when needed. Honestly, it looks exactly the same as Frost but just fire spells instead of ice.

frost is a lot to learn at first.. but after a while it becomes an easy spec. i can do windlord flawlessly while invocating prepull ccing an add. bursting down the main group+ reccing timing pet freeze +alter time for 2 extra ice lance procs..keeping frostbomb and frozen orb on cd.. for me i prefer frostbomb on windlord just cause i dont have to babysit 3 different targets.. one is easier and its relatively the same dps.. anyway i guess i havent gotten used to ntx3.

This macro is good for casting freeze, it casts every time its up when you hit Frostbolt. It's important to use this when ever you can, unless there is an opportunity to land it on two mobs very soon then wait a bit (also casts Frostfire when holding shift if you wish):

This macro is good for casting freeze, it casts every time its up when you hit Frostbolt. It's important to use this when ever you can, unless there is an opportunity to land it on two mobs very soon then wait a bit (also casts Frostfire when holding shift if you wish):

You might be surprised how useful that macro is.

As a wow player in general you should probably be using a dual action bar setup and the second bar will probably have a shift modifier on the keybindings which will make that macro not work very well. I only ever put shift modifiers on buttons I click like my ice block macro because of that.

You make it sound like the glyph is a cosmetic option. It is kind of mandatory depending on your amount of haste, unless of course you don't care about dps.

It depends on your trinkets and your haste rating. You won't lost much dps at 20% haste without trinkets that proc haste. I'm at 23% haste now thanks to some lucky gear drops and I'm reluctantly using the icy veins glyph because I have to.

It depends on your trinkets and your haste rating. You won't lost much dps at 20% haste without trinkets that proc haste. I'm at 23% haste now thanks to some lucky gear drops and I'm reluctantly using the icy veins glyph because I have to.

If you're at 23% full raid buff (no proc), you don't need the glyph. The haste cap is at 25% raid buffed (more detail in Kuni's guide).